NYT Reports on Business Person Running for Democratic Presidential Nomination Who Agrees with Republican Growth Projections

The article discusses the agenda of Andrew Yang, a New York-based businessperson, whose political agenda is centered on dealing with mass job displacement due to robots and artificial intelligence. Such mass displacement implies rapid productivity growth, presumably along the lines of the 3.0 percent growth the country saw in the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973 and again from 1995 to 2005.

This sort of rapid productivity growth would make it possible to reach the 3.0 percent growth rate that Republicans projected when they passed their tax cuts. (GDP growth is the sum of productivity growth and employment growth.) In the years since 2005, productivity growth has been close to 1.0 percent. The Congressional Budget Office and most other forecasters have projected that slow rates of productivity growth would continue. However, the robots taking our jobs crew strongly disagree.

Somehow, most reporting has failed to recognize the relationship between job-killing robots and GDP growth. If we do see the more rapid productivity growth envisioned by those concerned about job-killing robots, then deficits will certainly not be a problem. The country will be seeing enormous growth in its productive capacities and will need lots of spending to keep workers employed and fully utilize its capacity.